This deplorable piece of man-hating propaganda ultimately does a disservice to women as well. Inciting them to violence...
Feminist writer Dworkin (Life and Death, 1997, etc.) exploits a common analogy between the inferior status of diaspora Jews and women to highlight the function of both groups as scapegoats.
Dworkin draws on an extensive bibliography to demonstrate how, for thousands of years, marginalized groups have been systematically abused, violated, and deprived of human dignity. Her sources, however, seem to be used pell-mell and quoted out of context. Even worse, when Dworkin speaks in her own words, she frequently exhibits an ignorance of many of the subjects (from Jewish law to social conditions in Russia) most relevant to her argument. Her tendentious narrative rapidly deteriorates into a one-sided, angst-filled generalization of Dworkin’s own bitter personal feelings (rooted in her experience as a battered woman). As a result, she ends up committing the very sin she seeks to expose, “scapegoating” all men for all injustice in every period of history. She declares, for example, that it is degrading for a woman to hear the words “I love you” from a man, because these words are “a sign of appropriation.” The reader is left to wonder whether men should be equally insulted by women’s declarations of love. Furthermore, Dworkin completely ignores the force of the female libido, instead portraying women as passive prey to men’s desire. Both pornography and high art depicting the female form are declared equally hostile to women, with no attention paid to paintings and statues of nude men or the purely aesthetic value of the human body. Dworkin even advocates sending Israeli women to the front lines for the sake of her cherished principle of equality.
This deplorable piece of man-hating propaganda ultimately does a disservice to women as well. Inciting them to violence against men, Dworkin contributes to furthering the rift between the sexes, making the dream of a truly humane society based on mutual respect as elusive as ever.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-83612-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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